I made a halfhearted effort to explain the shoes in another way. The act was like trying on clothing in the wrong size pretending it would fit. For me, the definition of futility.
The Louboutins explained so much, so well. So painfully well. All that was necessary was a simple truth: Raoul’s special women wore Christian Louboutins.
How inadequate was I as a husband? Apparently quite.
I couldn’t find rage. Not for my dead wife. Not for my onetime friend.
God, that troubled me.
37
KIRSTEN SENT ME A TEXT as I was getting dressed for the day. I was getting dressed for the day because I had a rescheduled therapy appointment to attend.
The kind with me as the patient.
I had forwarded the ellbell email to Kirsten shortly after I read it the day before. She’d emailed a reply right back, indicating that she read Elliot’s missive the same way I did. She also echoed her earlier urgency that I retain good legal representation immediately.
The new text was a follow-up.
You make that call yet? Say yes.
I considered hedging but realized she might already know that I had not.
On my to do list. Promise. I have a lot going on.
My words were true, but they wouldn’t sway Kirsten, who was becoming a reluctant expert on my procrastination.
My hands felt tied. By revealing to her, or to the Denver attorney, the truth of what happened that night in Frederick, or the details of the clean-hands negotiation that took place between Sam and me, I would abrogate the arrangement I had with Sam. From that moment on it would be every man for himself. Clean hands be damned.
The consequences of that? Completely unpredictable.
I wasn’t willing to do that to my children. Or to Sam’s son. Sam and I had to work this out. Somehow. Before I saw that attorney in Denver.
How would we come to terms? I did not know. I actually thought that if Sam were arrested for killing Elias Contopo on the Tatonka Trail, the clean-hands decision would be made for me. I hated that I thought that.
BUT I THOUGHT IT. Another text arrived from Kirsten:
Be honest. Please. How about now? Call NOW.
Promise was what I began to type. But before I had a chance to send the text I heard Sam calling my name from outside the front door. I joined him on the porch.
I felt no inclination to invite him into my home. My lack of hospitality would seem odd to Sam, though Sam would use the Iron Range word goofy, which was a fine descriptor for the circumstances between us. He asked, “You’re doing okay?”
We hadn’t talked since he stormed away from me in North Boulder Park. I wasn’t sure what he was asking with his inquiry about my well-being. My feelings about the argument we’d had? My general welfare? My assessment of the likelihood of my imminent arrest for the Frederick murder? Or of Sam for the Tatonka Trail?
Sam’s question was not a banal social inquiry. I had to keep the big picture in mind. The fear I had was that Sam was setting me up to be identified as the shooter in Frederick, or that he was willing to let the momentum of fate settle out toward that end. As long as that fear simmered I couldn’t afford to let anything be banal with Sam Purdy.
I was sad. I was angry. I was disappointed. I was lonely. Mostly, right then, I was wary. I wore my therapist face to disguise as much as I could. I could not identify a non-sports topic that I was eager to initiate with Sam so I said, “Yeah, sure. You?”
My distrust left me with a vague sense of peril. It was like walking into the house thinking that maybe, possibly, I smelled mercaptan, the telltale perfume in natural gas.
Each time I saw Sam I was thinking I smelled mercaptan. How sure was I? Not quite certain. I was opening windows and doors for ventilation but I wasn’t ready to call for help.
“Are the kids home from school?” he said. “I thought I saw them.”
“They both have that bug that’s going around. Monday is a teacher training day. I thought I’d give them four days to get over it. They’re around somewhere.”
“Walk with me,” he said.
“Can this wait?” He shook his head. I checked the time.
I thought, Oh God, as I followed him out the lane.
When he reached a spot that he decided was far enough away, his hands went into his pockets. His eyes found my eyes. I looked away. He waited until we connected again. He said, “You ever figure out the answer to that thing I asked you about our DA?”
What? Sam’s question was so unexpected it distracted me almost as much as it irritated me. We had walked out the damn lane to talk about the closet our DA hadn’t been in for a decade? I said, “Elliot coming out? That question?”
Without any apology in his tone he said, “That’s it.”
“Why did we come out here? The kids know Elliot’s gay. They don’t care. Nobody cares.”
He allowed me my rant. He said, “Well? Got an answer?”
“I haven’t given it a moment’s thought. It’s ancient history. I’ve been distracted by other things. I didn’t realize Elliot’s exit from the closet was that urgent.”
“Your life? I don’t know what to say. I feel so much sorrow for you. For the kids. But other things don’t stop because you keep getting beat up. Our other problems—you know what I’m talking about—don’t go away because you’re bruised and bleeding. I’m your friend. I’m the one who needs to remind you that no matter how much you hurt, it’s always possible that you could be hurting more. I’d like to prevent that. So, yes, the question is important.”
“What are you saying? What do you know, Sam?”
“Please get me the information. If I’m right we can talk about what it means.”
“About what are you trying to be right?”
He pondered the question for a moment. “Gay rights and the role of homosexuality in contemporary society.”
The sarcasm felt too obtuse for Sam; his typical flavor arrived with less nuance. I was half serious when I asked, “Was that your master’s thesis?”
He laughed. “At St. Cloud State? Hardly.”
We grew silent. I wasn’t any more comfortable with the silence than I had been with our conversation. “We done, Sam?” I asked. I spun to head back toward the house.
“Wait. Fucking … wait.”
I could no longer disguise the fire in my eyes as I turned to face him. His eyes seemed full of sadness. That tempered my fire.
A good thing. I still smelled mercaptan.
He said, “At my house, at the park? Were you thinking—are you thinking—that I had something to do with killing that old man in his horse trailer? Do you think I somehow arranged to off the old fuck? Or did it myself?”
I had anticipated that accusation. I said, “I wanted to know what you’d heard about it. That’s all. If you were keeping something from me.”
“Bullshit. Why would I keep that from you?”
“Clean hands,” I said.
He stared at me while he processed variables. “No, that’s not it. Elliot put you on notice about the old man’s death with the damn email. You turned right around and did the same to me. Elliot thinks you did it, or had a hand in it. But you didn’t. So you came to my house and did to me what Elliot did to you. You think I killed him, or had a hand in it.”
I finally understood why we’d left the house to have this conversation.
Sam went on. “You think my solution to Tres’s problems in Frederick was to murder his grandfather? Is that what you think of me? That I’m some kind of cold-blooded killer? That my solution to every problem in life is to find someone to whack?”
I was aware that I had a recent conversation with Carl Luppo not too many steps away from where Sam and I stood about applying exactly that kind of solution to a very similar problem. I was also thinking that Sam’s accusation was in the vicinity of accurate.
I had no defense ready, no reply handy. I said, “I have to go.” I took two steps toward the house.
S
am’s voice carried menace. “Don’t walk away. What about you? Why would Elliot Bellhaven think you might have a reason to kill Big Elias? You’re missing something. Part of Elliot’s message. Or you’re not seeing something. Or you see something that you won’t trust me to help you with.”
I felt my disadvantage. My distrust of Sam was based on my belief that he was too comfortable with having me on law enforcement radar for the murder in Frederick. Was he playing me in some new way? I did not know.
Sam asked, “Does Elliot have something on you? About Frederick? Is he pushing on you about that woman’s death?” Sam’s ex-girlfriend—the murder victim in Frederick—had become “that woman.” Wow. Chutzpah. “Does Elliot have leverage that I don’t know about? Alan? Tell me. We are in this together. Don’t forget that.”
We are in this together. Maybe Sam was being my friend. Or maybe he was using our friendship to compromise me further or to minimize his own vulnerability for the Frederick murder. I couldn’t tell which was true.
Sam asked, “The drawing of the car? The one the kid did, the one you gave me that night in the ICU. The one that probably kept me out of prison?”
Sam was acknowledging that I’d had his back when having his back was most crucial. “Yeah?” I said into the breeze, wondering where he was going. I could see no remaining evidence of the previous night’s flurries.
Sam asked, “Did Lauren show the drawing to Elliot before she came to your office the day she was shot? Has Elliot seen that drawing?”
It was a good question. Elias Tres’s drawing only tied Sam to the murder if it was combined with the child’s story about the man he saw getting out of a car below his bedroom window. A man wearing a Twins cap and carrying an Avalanche duffel.
Sam was the Twins fan, the Avs fan. Lauren and I knew Sam’s sports teams. Elliot probably did not. Without that knowledge? Elias Tres’s drawing implicated me, not Sam, because the car pictured in the child’s drawing belonged to Lauren and me.
I said, “If Elliot saw the drawing, one of us would probably be in jail awaiting trial. The other one of us? Clean hands.”
“Is that what this is about?” he said. “Is that what you’re waiting for? Does Elliot have that evidence? Am I already fucked and I just don’t know it?”
I said, “Or I am the one who is fucked, Sam, and I just don’t know it?”
“What does that mean?” He rushed up to me, stopping inches away. “You don’t think I have your back, do you? You don’t trust me? What did I do, Alan?”
I walked away. Sam followed me for a half-dozen steps. His voice more modulated, he said, “Do you have something on Elliot that you’re not telling me? Who’s blackmailing whom here? Are you setting me up with him?”
I said, “I have an appointment in town, Sam. I need to go.”
I was continuing to smell mercaptan.
I was a few steps away from him when Sam said, “Your hit-man friend was right, Alan. McClelland did have a stroke. I checked. Left side.” I stopped, but I didn’t turn around to face Sam. “It was a big stroke. He can’t talk.”
The news about Michael McClelland was good news. But I felt no elation. I had forgotten how to feel when I heard good news.
I walked to the house with great care. I didn’t want to generate any sparks.
I DIDN’T RECALL REACHING a decision not to tell my therapist about Lauren and Raoul and her Louboutins. Or about not trusting my best friend.
Or about the good news that my nemesis had been neutered.
But as I drove to town to see Lila I knew I wouldn’t tell her any of it.
38
DOCTOR LILA
ALAN GREGORY’S REGULAR APPOINTMENT had been set for the first day of March, the in-like-a-lion day. At his request, we had rescheduled it for the afternoon of the fourth.
The rescheduling came on the heels of his cancellation of the previous visit. I was keeping score. That made three misses out of eight appointments. Plus two reschedules. Not a good ratio.
The rescheduled in-like-a-lion session started in silence. Two entire minutes of it.
I thought Alan looked defeated. I anticipated that he had absorbed some new esoteric blow. Like the psychological equivalent of being blinded by dust from a comet. I waited to learn what it was. I prepared myself to be surprised.
I prepared myself to be more off balance than he was.
The extended silence began getting to me. I was trying to find the courage to query him about the cancellation. But he spoke before I found the mettle.
“Lila, I am not sure this is working,” was what he said after the two minutes.
Those are not words that any young therapist wishes to hear. I get anxious when I hear them, or their like, from a patient. I keep some stock responses rehearsed and handy to mask the anxiety I inevitably experience when it sounds to me like I’m about to be fired.
I pulled one of those lines off the shelf. “You haven’t been keeping your appointments. That might be a reason this feels like it’s not working.”
He didn’t look at me. He said, “Symptom. Not cause. You know that.”
I didn’t know that. Neither did he. But from my limited experience with Alan Gregory I knew that when he got parsimonious, I got nowhere.
“Well,” I said, “maybe, maybe not. Why don’t we take a clean look at your goals? That can help sometimes.”
He laughed. It wasn’t obvious ridicule. It was a kind enough laugh, given the circumstances. But he did laugh. At me? Close enough.
“My goals?” he said. His eyes were wide. “Really?”
“I was thinking … what you hope to gain from psychotherapy.” I was on my heels. I knew it. He knew it.
He shifted his weight on the chair. “What are your goals?” he asked. “For me?”
In an admirably even voice I said, “That is not my role here.” And you know damn well it’s not my role. Do not be cruel to me. You are making me uncomfortable right now because you can. I am trying to be helpful to you.
“I’ll go first,” he said. He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. He took a deep breath.
I felt some trepidation. I did not like the fear I was feeling.
“My goals?” he said. “I want my life back, my wife back, my work back, my friends back. I want to stop writing big checks to big-time lawyers.”
He had adopted a cadence for his speech that he’d never used before with me. The pace was rapid and breathless. Almost hostile in its crispness. The thought that exploded in my brain? This feels like an old lover suddenly trying out a new, unwelcome move.
That I had that thought with him troubled me. A lot. I tried not to let it show. His aggression felt so palpable it distracted me. Listen, I told myself. Listen to him.
He went on. “I would like to sleep for more than two hours. To have an appetite that lasts for more than two bites. I would like to trust somebody. To enjoy the company of someone older than my children.
“To work. To be wanted at work. To want to work. To be able to work.
“I want to smell my wife’s perfume. To have my wife want me to smell her perfume. I want to feel her flesh against my flesh. To kiss her. To be kissed by her. To love. To be loved. I want romance.
“I want to be … beloved.
“I want to feel not toxic. Or fragile. Or lost. Or vengeful.
“I want others to treat me as not toxic. Or fragile. Or lost. Or vengeful.
“I want to stop feeling that I must create new victims so that I don’t have to feel like one myself.
“I want to move on. And I don’t.
“I want to start a simple task and finish it. One. Wash the car. Scrub the floor. Clean out my wife’s closet. Organize the papers on her desk. Go from A to Z. Once.
“I want to have a single day without harassment from near and from far. I want to look into the future and see beyond the end of my fucking nose.
“What do I want? One sunny day. And then another after it.”
He sat
back. I swallowed. He said, “So how are those goals? Are we getting close? What does your list for me look like?”
I had recoiled from the intensity of his pain, from the rawness of his longing. I knew I had to recover. My next words had to connect with him.
“Harassment?” I said. “That’s … a new one.” I hoped it was new. In the moment I wasn’t sure. I almost chose “creating victims” from his list but I didn’t know what he meant with that.
He slid his lower jaw sideways. He tilted his head, too. “The harassment is legal. High up. The top. I need to find a way to stop it. Not for a day. Or a month. Permanently. Stop it.”
The rhythm of his speech had returned to the familiar, but his vagueness was driving me no less mad. His aggression seemed to have dissipated, like smoke in a breeze after an explosion. I said, “That’s not much information for me to work with, Alan.”
“You are correct, Lila. It’s not. Clean hands?”
Clean hands. He always kept that card up his sleeve.
I had to undermine his despair. “If? If we resolved the trust issues between us, you could—you would—feel assurance that my hands and your hands were the same. Then we could talk openly. Then you could let me help you with those goals.”
I knew I was sounding like a supplicant. I hated that I sounded like a supplicant.
Alan’s next words were not a reply to mine. I felt no assurance he’d even heard me. He said, “The only solution I see is to take him down before he takes me down.”
“Down?” I asked.
Alan winced. He said, “I can’t live like this. With this constant sense of jeopardy. The accusations. The threats. The implied risks to my kids. I can’t.”
“Down?” I repeated.
“Him before me. Yes. I have to find a way. Therapy can’t help with that.”
“What can help with that?” I said. Don’t tell me, I thought.
Alan chose silence. Three entire minutes. I timed it. Digitally.
He broke the silence. He said, “If I can’t be open with you, this process won’t work.”
Compound Fractures Page 21
